Murray's People:
A collection of essays
Murray C. Morgan
J. Ham Lewis, the Best Dressed
Politician of His Day
The Tacoma News Tribune
November 4, 1993
P. FP12
Essay Index
Copyright, 1960, Murray Morgan
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J. Ham Lewis, the Best Dressed Politician of His Day
When
James Hamilton (J. Ham) Lewis came to Tacoma in 1885 he brought with
him certificates indicating he had been admitted to the practice of
law in Virginia, a reputation for sartorial elegance and an urge to
enter politics.
Finding
no clients he wound up loading lumber on the Tacoma waterfront. When
at last he was asked to represent someone in court, it was a fellow
Steve Dore accused of stealing cigars. J. Ham got the man off but his
fee was just 90 cents. He relocated to Seattle, where he entered into
partnership with Luthene Claremont Gilman, whose purchase of a
Caligraph machine had introduced Puget Sound to the wonders of
typewriting.
After
only a few weeks' exposure to Lewis' courtly manners (he was so
chivalrous he stood up when speaking to a woman on the telephone), his
flow of words (which won him a job teaching rhetoric at the UW) and
his habit of strolling Seattle's board sidewalks at midday in what he
considered everyday garb (longtail coat, flowing cravat, plaid
waistcoat, striped pants and mauve spats), his new constituents sent
him to Olympia to represent them as senator in the Territorial
Legislature.
"The
Dude," as his fellow legislators called him, attracted immediate
attention by signing the register at the Carlton Hotel in a flowing
script that covered four lines.
On the
senate floor he reflected the popular mood when he defended
territorial womankind against the perils the fair sex would be exposed
to the right to vote, which had been taken from them by the
Territorial Supreme Court, should be restored. As voters and full
citizens, they might be called to jury duty and hear cases that would
expose them to the facts of life. No decent man would wish that upon
them. His position was the popular one for another 20 years.
As an
attorney, Lewis attracted further attention when he represented James
Wickersham, the Pierce County probate judge, against charges that he
had seduced and impregnated one Sadie Brantner when she solicited him
to buy a set of encyclopedias. Lewis' defense was that it was
Wickersham who had been seduced, that certain circumstances indicated
he could not be responsible for Sadie's pregnancy and the whole sordid
business had been concocted by political rivals.
Wickersham
was convicted but, a few months later, Lewis returned to court with
Sadie's admission that she had misidentified herself as an unsullied
victim. The judge ordered a new trial, the prosecutor asked for
dismissal, and Wickersham moved on to fame as Alaska's great pioneer
jurist.
As for
The Dude, he presided over the first Democratic convention after
Washington became a state. He decided against running for Congress in
1890, or governor in 1892. In 1894, Democrats in the legislature
favored him for U.S. senator but the Republican majority prevailed. In
1896, he was put forward as a possible vice presidential nominee on
the Democratic ticket, which lost.
But in
November, Washington voters elected Lewis to Congress. He lasted only
one term.
In 1889
the Democrats in the Legislature favored him for Senator but the
Republicans again prevailed. That was his last hurrah in this state.
In 1903
Lewis moved to Chicago to practice corporate law. But he was far from
through with politics. In 1905 he backed the winning candidate for
mayor of Chicago and was appointed corporation counsel.
In 1912,
the Illinois Legislature sent Lewis to Washington, D.C., as a senator.
He was chosen by his fellow senators to fill the newly created post of
majority whip. That put him in charge of keeping the Democratic
senators in line for Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom program of breaking
up trusts and combinations and restoring competition. The Dude also
found himself arguing in favor of woman suffrage. But Lewis was again
a one-term wonder, and lost his seat in the Republican sweep of 1918.
In 1930,
with the Republicans in trouble because of the depression, he again
ran again for the senate. His opponent was Congresswoman Ruth Hanna
McCormick, the widow of the man who had defeated him in 1918. He
treated her with belittling gallantry and won, 2 to 1.
Back in
the senate Lewis was again chosen party whip, this time with the job
of keeping the Democrats in line behind FDR's New Deal program,
although he denied that he was a New Dealer.
The Dude
became ill while on a 1935 junket to Russia, died in Washington, and
is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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